One Sleepless Night
by mythirdeye
Summary: An angsty piece about Lex in love


Author's Note: This is a short one-chapter piece about Lex and his secret relationship with someone (pretty sure most of you can guess who it is so I'm not even sure why I'm being so coy about it). Anyway, although I don't particularly see Lex as someone who falls deeply in love, I'm an angst person by nature so I thought why not.

Disclaimer: All else is mine except for the characters.

* * * * * *

How did it turn out this way?

Was there a twist in my cosmic fate? A twist, bit of a joke, to make up for my lack of sense of humor with 21 years worth of interest? Was this a test to ruin me, to break down the empire I have painstakingly built with detailed elaboration on its turrets? The empire that I label my life, my successes, my downfalls, my lessons learned, my vengeance wreaked.

Should I leave this behind because I have feelings for a girl?

Men, great and tall, evil and important, insignificant and worthless, they have all crumbled beneath the power of a female. It's an immense power and I yearn to put the tip of my finger on its pulsing beat, to learn more from that power. If it were not an impossibility, I would have achieved it.

The impossibility keeps- or kept- me wise. I stay away from it. I keep away from women who are likely to captivate and choose the ones who prefer to use a man rather than love a man. The system is simpler, the challenge is greater and the triumph is far sweeter.

But what would happen instead? After years of following one simple rule: never fall in love. What happens to me now?

I have unknowingly walked into a trap. I aimed so far when I supposed that I could not love, because before I knew it, I found myself in love, and she was right there in front of me all the while. I, in love, when I have amused myself many times by watching the comical catastrophes of Clark Kent wooing an unattainable Prom Queen, and to be in that hole myself? 

It is a disease. 

What do I do? Sing in its rain? Discard all my plans to give in fully to the idea of love? Rejoice in its splendor? Because it is splendid. You will never know a feeling like love. You will never find a drug that could copy it. You could never find another woman to make your heart accelerate to that speed. You could never find another high such as this. Its splendor is complete, and it beats every damn thing in the universe. I feel like I want to give myself to it completely and give her everything she wants in this world.

And here I am, the very contradiction of me, staring at the figure beside me who is wrapped in my arms. Watching her sleep in peace with a certainty that I wouldn't, not for the world, withdraw my arm away from her neck despite the discomfort in my muscle, because I refuse to ruin her peaceful slumber.

What do you do when you love someone more than she loves you?

You walk away. That is what I should do.

It's a certainty, and you cannot ignore a certainty. It will only resurface to stab you in the chest with a bigger knife when you least expect it. I have to steel myself and change my fear of losing her to a resolution to leave her. 

I have to pain her with kindness for the greater good. For both of us.

Yet I can't.

I know I won't. 

What use is such a painful habit to a man? Lying down here with her but unseen by her, I contemplate the troubles that this young woman has borne in me. It's easy to distress and configure the rights and wrongs of her, but the execution in repairing what is wrong is never that easy. How can it be easy? Not when it is her presence that repairs me from being a hateful and vengeful man into a happy man. Hearing her breathing repairs me – and how can I right something that cannot feel wrong?

We are all indulging bastards at heart – that's what makes us human. We indulge in bad things because the taste of the forbidden is exquisite and one cannot find a better rush. It makes us feel better, it makes us strong, but most of all, it makes us a different person.

This girl makes me want to be a better man. For no good reason other than to make her proud of me.

They say a wise man is a man who knows he is not as wise as people think of him. I wouldn't be the first to tell anyone that I'm not as confident as I always am, nor as clever, but the truth bites no matter how well you conceal it. I have my weaknesses, and through a brave façade it's always easier to hide the truth. 

But she looks at me, and I cannot help but feel the prickly sensation of a person stripped bare of his mask.

I have turned from my father's son into a paranoid, insecure and fearful idiot – no matter that no one else can see it. She has made me fear losing her.

It's not easy to uphold a relationship – and it doesn't even matter how old she is. Being a Luthor is enough to make any relationship a disaster from the beginning. If the woman isn't using me, then she'll start from misunderstanding me to finally despising me.

But she came to me. She came to me and it was just something in the air that night. It was a coming together of minds, and just a little bit of our souls. She laughed and she smiled, and it seemed incomprehensible to her at that moment that I could ever be a different man than what she saw of me that night. She couldn't believe that I was ruthless. She couldn't believe that I had ever done anything evil. Although she would have readily believed it before that evening, it was something she could not envision that night as content as she was in my company.

I thought of how naïve she was. But she was so willing. She was so willing to learn about the world and she was so willing to experience every inch of it. Her energy burned in her blue eyes that night, her excitement enraptured me, and before I knew it I realized that I was in love.

How does it happen? How can you know someone and not even notice her, and then in one evening realize that it only took a second for you to fall in love with her. One mischievous smile, one glint in her eye, one second, and that was it.

There is no Clark Kent in our lives, nor is there a Gabe Sullivan or a Lionel Luthor. We keep ourselves outside of our world, by our own choosing. Although it is a source of very sore insecurity to me, I wonder what it was that made her look away from Clark that night, for all his compassion and goodness – a man once gone would be a man this world could not afford to make once more. I wonder what made her look away from him, and fix her eyes onto me instead. A man crooked by character and forever doomed to stay misshapen as such. 

She said, "I will never understand you, and maybe it's better that way."

Our relationship has been kept secret for a few months now. Three months and two days. Full of rendezvous evenings and secret kisses in the dark. Full of her. A lot of her. I lay here and I watch her sleeping, and the desire to conquer her has not yet weaned, not even flickered. She will never allow me to conquer her, because she doesn't trust me.

I don't trust her either. I feel the nervous tick when I find her waiting for me in my study, calmly swinging in my chair like a canary singing from a branch, idly touching my computer screen. I can't help wondering if she would do it. If she would take that extra step to actually investigate me. And what would happen if she did? Would she not care for me anymore? Would she exploit me?

Yes, yes, to all of the above.

So what is it I'm afraid of? Her exploiting me or her leaving me?

But I can't let go of her.

She stirs in my arms, a restless movement of a person who thinks too much. 

She turns and nestles her head in the crook of my shoulder, snuggling into me as she sleeps. I breathe in the scent of her hair.

Taking the edge of the blanket, I slowly move it away from her body. I take in her naked figure with my eyes, from the smooth roundness of her behind, to the curve in her hip, the slight belly, the swell of her breasts, her slender neck, and I'm well aware that perhaps this is the only time I'll be able to see her absolutely naked. She has her own insecurities. Her lack of confidence in her physical self is evident to anyone who looks close enough into her eyes. I would have to wonder why, but I suppose it's relative to all teenagers. The desire to have the gangly body of a supermodel. The desire to look like Lana Lang.

She will never be like that. A common ant among other ants. I refuse for her to be like that. It's something she should embrace, not hide.

She shivers from the cold and I wrap the blanket around her.

Maybe she loves me too.

Hope. Spreading its wings beneath you and enabling you to fly, only to crash.

Maybe this is a risk. Maybe this is a chance I'm supposed to take. 

A chance I will take.

I close my eyes and wait to drift into sleep, with her body in my arms, the scent of her hair on my nose, and the feel of her bare skin against mine. I feel a fierce protectiveness, a desire to be a knight in shining armor, to keep her hidden from the world and its evils, and to keep her by my side.

I needn't be the only adult in this situation. She is free to think and choose as she wills. If she deems it right to leave me, then I believe that she has the better power to go through with it. But she hasn't, not yet.

For now, maybe I should relish what I have.

At least allow me to derive some comfort from this knowledge on this one sleepless night: it turned out this way by chance, but it's by my own choice that I stay. Future, unforeseen and uncertain perils may lay ahead, but I will keep her near.

For now.


End file.
